Elizabeth Scott LCSW, CEDS-S
Psychotherapy
I have been practicing psychotherapy since 1988 in California. I currently work all on Zoom from my home in Santa Cruz. I work with adults who are dealing with a wide range of difficulties including depression, loss and grief, anxiety, chronic illness, eating disorders and relationship problems. I listen to my clients and share information to help them develop practical skills so they can identify and move towards what is really important to them in their lives. I help clients build healthy relationships, first with themselves and then with the people in their lives. My clients get well. They tend to appreciate my humor and warmth, and the practical, hands-on approach I bring to therapy.
Eating Disorder Treatment
Parent Consultation
I do not work with teens with eating disorders individually at this time however, I do offer comprehensive treatment planning and consultation for parents of teens and college students suffering with eating disorders. I help parents (in collaboration with their children) build effective outpatient treatment teams to support their child’s recovery. I support parents to collaborate with a tightly knit team of skilled and experienced providers including therapists, doctors, registered dietitians and a psychiatrists (as needed) to help their child become free of eating and body image problems based on my 27 years of eating disorders treatment and prevention experience.
Elizabeth’s approach helps parents to:
- Navigate the confusing messages they get from treatment providers about their role in their child’s eating disorder recovery
- Repair the relationship between caregivers and child after participating in “Family Based Therapy” (FBT)
- Support the dignity and autonomy of their child in the recovery process
- Preserve their relationship with their children through the process of recovery
- Learn to communicate skillful messages to their children about food and their bodies.
- Promote critical thinking about the messages their child receives about their body and food
- Trust their own intuition about what their child needs
- Rebuild their child’s capacity to listen to their own bodies when considering what to eat and how to exercise
- Support their child to cultivate a quality of fierce self-love to resist mean and aggressive messages and actions from others that impact their self-worth
- Support their child to develop the internal resources needed to avoid high-risk behaviors linked with self-hatred and body dissatisfaction such as drug and alcohol use, eating disorders, cutting and unsafe sexual activity.
- Build positive community that supports their efforts to develop a Body Positive family ethos that leads to freedom from eating disorders
- Encourage their children to connect with the vibrant eating disorders prevention movement of The Body Positive so that they can become a part of the solution to society’s mixed-up messages effecting eating and body image
